Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work

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A restoration of the village-making power of matrimony, a building of cultural memory, and an examination of meaning-making for our ceremonially adrift time Public and private rituals are failing this culture. Longtime scholar, storyteller, and ceremonialist Stephen Jenkinson has tracked that failure, along with the personal poverties that have followed, and has set about mending the brokenness-the meaning and connection-one wedding ceremony at a time. "Matrimony is the place where culture leans on love for its portion, its tithe," explains Jenkinson. "It is the mothering of culture, and ritual is its vehicle, and patrimony its precursor." Privatizing love, turning matrimony into a social institution barren of all substance, and flattening rituals into benign, generic celebrations of life erodes our skills as citizen witnesses to a troubled time. The way forward, then, is to learn and reclaim our cultural ceremonies and their meaning. Among the insights that Stephen Jenkinson offers in this thought-provoking work: . The place of matrimony and patrimony in modern understandings of romance . The importance of village rites and rituals . Old understandings of union, marriage, and matrimony rendered new Through witty stories, insightful history, and meditative questions, Matrimony invites us to examine the significance of matrimony, ritual, ceremony, and cultural articulation-and how to redeem them for future generations.

Reviews

"Matrimony is a triumph, analyzing and reconstructing marriage through the ages. This illuminating work challenges the paucity of the modern wedding ritual and offers inspiring, practical pathways for deeper, more meaningful rituals. It's a bold, clear-eyed view of what the marriage ritual could be, if we are courageous enough to tune in to the ancestors and to follow our truth." --Manchn Magan, documentarian and author of Thirty-Two Words for Field

"With Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson trails a troubled beast. A beast many regard as simply AWOL, rarely glimpsed or woefully stretched on the rack of whatever progress report is currently doing the rounds. A beast with hurt feelings. With chewy wit, nimble storytelling, and the unmistakable tang of lived experience, he sets our sights for the initiatory core of the endeavor. Turns out, we barely knew the thing at all. This isn't a book about groovy intuitions, but mythically reasoned imaginings; far may it sail." --Martin Shaw, PhD, mythologist and author of Bardskull and the award-winning Mythteller trilogy

"Matrimony is a summons, a reckoning, and a blessing. With the raw grace and precise poetics that are his signature, Stephen Jenkinson lays bare the scaffolding of love and commitment--not as sentimental refuge but as a culture-making labor, as an inheritance both weighty and wondrous. This book will shake loose your assumptions, invite you into the work of witnessing and being witnessed, and, if you let it, alter your understanding of what it is to be bound--to another, to time, to the making of meaning itself." --Elena Brower, artist and bestselling author of Practice You and Art of Attention

Author Bio

Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a cultural worker, teacher, author, and ceremonialist. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. He has master's degrees from Harvard University (theology) and the University of Toronto (social work). He's the author of Come of Age, the award-winning Die Wise, Money and the Soul's Desires, and Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson). For more, visit orphanwisdom.com.